Ask HN: How did you go about starting up, in the UK? - <AUTHOR>

So I have an idea that may have potential, like most of you this is just 1 of hundreds of ideas that I come up with.  Like most of you I normally file them away for later interest/completely forget about them.
I would however like to take the plunge, for better or for worse and was wondering:
What has been your experience with a start up in the UK?
What was your starting capital?
Did you apply/receive any grants/loans?
What was your most valuable resource from idea to execution?
What resources would you recommend?
How did you scale/fail?
Obviously I'd prefer first hand experience or accounts from those working on a start up although any and all viewpoints are welcome. <comment><USER2> This experience relates to a startup in 2005 that folded during the credit crunch (2008). I am now working on a new product suite whilst continuing to consult.

The Mortgage Portal was an online marketplace for mortgage brokers to find appropriate products for their customers. It started with an idea that I spent a month building in my spare time. I worked with a colleague (both of us consulting in the mortgage technology arena) to bring it to market.

I started with a flexible mortgage that I drew salary against - so £0 capital. We then went around hawking the idea to the marketplace. We met a lot of resistance from established players (owned by the big banks, so no way we could disrupt the marketplace), and in the end pivoted into a platform for new lenders to get to market quickly. We helped a handful of banks launch new channels in a few months, which was a great selling point. Then came the downturn.

Our sales model was monthly fee + per transaction fee. It was never profitable.

We didn't look at grants/loans. There are some around, but my opinion is they are probably a distraction at this stage. If you're interested look at [http://www.j4bgrants.co.uk/](http://www.j4bgrants.co.uk/) \- they have a wealth of information.

The most valuable thing we did was pivot. We didn't pivot fast enough which made things untenable. We never scaled (started with two, ended with just me), and we failed for various reasons. I could blame the market - all our remaining customers either went bankrupt or closed within the space of a few days - but the reality was that the idea was just a starting point and we didn't move from that.

In my view, if you have an idea, your first step is to go out there and find a customer. Don't build anything (that is the easy bit) before you have someone willing to give you money. We should've done that - taken the idea and then asked what our customers wanted to do with it - rather than impose our views on them.

As for resources, there are many available and it will depend on what your trying to achieve and where you're located. If in London, I'd recommend the Google Campus ([http://www.campuslondon.com/](http://www.campuslondon.com/)) as a good starting point. Then look for Meetups in your area.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response, I have 2 people IRL that are "interested" in buying, a further 3 on my IM list.

I am based in London but the campus is to expensive for me, I'm going to be working out of my spare bedroom, lol. I've been looking at meet ups on meetup.com and have identified 7 that I'd like to attend due to pure interest, I guess I'll just have to go. Truth be told that's 1 thing I'm nervous about as I'm not very social.

<comment><USER2> I've found meetups to be frequented by many different types, including those that think they are not very social. Don't be put off by that - you'll find your common interests help guide you through. Or go with a friend if you feel awkward.</comment></comment></comment>


Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.gorgorat.com/#35 <comment><USER3> Out of 101 comments, no one mentions that this site is hosting an illegal copy of an artist's work? I mean, sure, the whole book is great... but shouldn't we be having a bit of respect for someone's intellectual property and not linking to it?

If Gorgorat.com has permission to print the book, or it's now in public domain, then I'm the first to say link to that pup... but I didn't see anything on the site to say this.

I'm a bit surprised that folks who make their living creating intellectual property are so blase about this. There were more comments about the inappropriate affiliate link than the fact that the book is still in press and under copyright.

Let's not devolve into "information wants to be free" and "the world is open source", but stick to the fact that the book is not free and open source in the US legal system at this point, AFAIK. Would we be linking to a hosted full copy of PG's excellent book Hackers etc. (<http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html>) to highlight one of his points? Probably not.

<comment><USER4> Hackers and Painters is actually available on Scribd in its entirety.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/47180/Paul-Graham-Hackers-And- Pain...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/47180/Paul-Graham-Hackers-And-Painters)

<comment><USER3> Whoops. That was a bad example, wasn't it? Ah well, the rest of the comment (hopefully) is still valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The entire book (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman) is amazing and hilarious. I highly recommend it for the HN crowd.

<comment><USER6> It's a wonderful anecdote, but where to begin..

I was pretty hopeless at the whole dating game till I read The Game and started to try it out; it was a brilliant read. But the bare truth of it is that it doesn't actually work all that well. Oh yeh sure you can be a PUA and grab some fairly shallow girls - but it's a bit boring to be honest (and your success rate is fairly low - you "win" by asking lots of women). The only thing The Game gives you is confidence; which is 90% of the trick.

Indeed the best advice in this article is twofold.

\- Confidence (subtly suggested) is a big factor. She's talking to you - <USER2> your not confident she'll only stay out of sympathy

\- Dont pay for everything/anything; the _best_ advice you will ever learn. I had plenty of crap dates spending loads of money in the hope of getting laid and it invariably went nowhere (a kiss on the cheek usually, bah). Till one date the girl randomly said "I'm not going to sleep with you tonight, can we just have a nice time" - so with no real investment in the evening we had an awesome fun just spending time together.

Now when I go on a date the first thing I'll say is "so do you want to get the first round or the second?". It's subtle but works brilliantly; usually we share the rounds and have a great time (and maybe sleep together, but I find that a less important conclusion now)

Against all the odds Im a pretty good dater. So when my friends ask for advice or help I usually say:

\- go on a date just to have a good time with a girl, not just to sleep with her

\- share the costs

\- dont be gentlemanly at the end of the night. She's a person too and if she's not interested in getting laid she'll just say no

\- be confident. She's on a date with you already!!

:)

<comment><USER7> When reading any of the PUA stuff, you have to realize that the common threads are simply communicating effectively, having confidence, breaking out of your shell, and simply displaying YOUR personality in a fashion that makes you attractive.

I think the issue with a lot of people blindly following the advice and material is that they understand the science but don't understand the delivery. The things you learn here should help you out in ALL facets of life that involve social interaction. Mold them to fit your needs and you'll be set. Sounds like its worked for you!

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. Problem is everyone handing out PUA avoids telling you that because it is easier to market a "Method"(tm). Took me a few months and I know people who still dont "get it" years later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of my favorite quotes from him:

"The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry... The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it." – Richard Feynman

<http://www.phy.ilstu.edu/pte/310content/nature/feynman.html>

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, judging from the context, that wasn't even a joke.

<comment><USER10> Are you upset because a man said it? "Math is too male and we need to come up with more female ways of teaching it" is a pretty standard feminist idea. In fact, replace "math" with a wide variety of things.

Recall he's not working under modern PC strictures, not that he necessarily would have subjected himself to them anyhow. He gets to say it directly, not cloak it in endless verbiage.

That said, I actually disagree. Math is what it is and everybody regardless of gender must bend their brain to the subject and not the other way around. I think its fundamental inhumanity is dominant. But you seem to me to be casually implying that his statement is un-PC, and I think it's actually rather shockingly PC, just also very blunt.

<comment><USER9> No, I'm "upset" because the rest of the article makes it clear that Feynman really did think that women were inherently useless as math -- and even "rational thought" in general:

>Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something.

This is a bit rich for my tastes (but it will no doubt go down very well on this forum). I just don't see why it would be someone's favorite quote, unless they liked making fun of women's intellectual abilities.

<comment><USER11> I'm genuinely curious if anyone has studied the differences in the sexes when it comes to math.

Why is it no woman has won the fields medal? Why do many talented women stop their academic career at the bachelor and masters level when it comes to mathematics?

I think you would of been able to say that sexism in academia was a reason in the past, but I just don't think that really flies anymore.

Is it possible the genuinely is a difference between mathematical ability between men and women or do people this this is purely cultural?

<comment> barry-cotter edit:

<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/22/8801.full>

Two recent studies directly address the question of whether greater male variability in mathematics is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Machin and Pekkarinen (19) reported that the M:F VR in mathematics was significantly >1.00 at the P < 0.05 level among 15-year-old students in 34 of 40 countries participating in the 2003 PISA and among 13-year-old students in 33 of 50 countries participating in the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). However, these data also indicated that the math VR was significantly less than or insignificantly different from 1.00 for some of the countries that participated in these assessments (e.g., Table 2), a finding inconsistent with the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis.

...

Similarly, Penner's cross-nation analysis of the 1995 TIMSS data (20) showed that the proportion of girls scoring above the 95th percentile positively and significantly correlated with several measures of female equality and status, including equity in educational opportunities and representation in the labor force and political offices.

Best I could find in 5 minutes

Consequences in High School and College of Sex Differences in Mathematical Reasoning Ability: A Longitudinal Perspective Camilla Persson Benbow and Julian C. Stanley The Johns Hopkins University

Between 1972 and 1974 the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) identified over 2,000 7th and 8th graders who scored as well as a national sample of 11th and 12th grade females on the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Mathematics or Verbal tests. A substantial sex difference in mathematical reasoning ability was found (Benbow & Stanley, 1980b, 1981). The consequences and development of this sex difference over the following 5 years were investigated longitudinally. Over 91 percent (1,996 out of 2,188 SMPY students) participated. This study established that the sex difference persisted over several years and was related to subsequent sex differences in mathematics achievement. The sex difference in mathematics did not reflect differential mathematics course taking. The abilities of males developed more rapidly than those of females. Sex differences favoring males were found in participation in mathematics, performance on the SAT-M, and taking of and performance on mathematics achievement and Advanced Placement Program examinations. SMPY females received better grades in their mathematics courses than SMPY males did. Few significant sex differences were found in attitudes toward mathematics.

Here's a visualisation (I think) of the male/female ratios of various IQs you'd expect given the different variances [http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/452277906/intelligence- quot...](http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/452277906/intelligence-quotient- visualized)

<comment><USER12> Well, I can do better than that in 5 minutes but that's because I have paid a lot of attention to this question.

I think the most conclusive evidence that M/F math gaps are cultural in origin lies in international studies, where the gap ranges from negligible in progressive countries (eg. Scandinavia) to massive in less equal societies (eg Turkey).

<http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-1-103.pdf>

Generally the anglo-saxon socities (UK, USA, Australia) are "middling" in this.

Of course this only covers "normal" math abilities (ie the ability to understand school/college math). "Genius" level ability is a lot harder to quantify, partly because it is such small number statistics and there are many confounding social variables to do with access to and selection pressures of post-graduate education.

<comment><USER13> Just curious, why do you believe Scandinavia is more equal than the US, UK or Australia?

<comment><USER12> _Just curious, why do you believe Scandinavia is more equal than the US, UK or Australia?_

Gender equality metrics, eg. see the World Economic Forum report, generated from "hard" indicators:

<http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/rankings2008.pdf>

where the top 3 countries are Scandinavian (4 if you include Iceland). On the same list, the UK is 13th, Australia is 21st, and the USA is 27th.

This list is consistent with my own impressions. You will also note the reasonably high correlation with the math gap list I referenced upthread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From: <http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0504.html?m=3>

"The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said."

<comment><USER15> You cut off the quote. Why?

Here is the rest:

"On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm.

<comment><USER14> Because I do not want his charm to detract from the rest of it. (charisma > sexism) == wrong. Also, in my opinion, it is actually a bit sad that the lady says, "oh well, it's ok to be treated that way because he's a good teacher". This is exactly the kind of compromise that victims make too often.

Bill Clinton was not even being sexist and he got tasered big time. I'm not sure why Feynman should get a pass.

<comment><USER16> The point is that he was somewhat sexist in some fairly normal ways, but _at the same time_ he was _extremely unsexist_ in ways that _no one else was_.

Other people may have been more polite than Feynman in casual situations, but when it came to serious discussion he treated women (and students) as equals better than other people.

<comment><USER17> No, the point is that sexism is still sexism, even when sexism was (more) socially acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it works because it takes money out of the equation.

There's a line in a song: "I've got dozens of friends and the fun never ends, that is as long as I'm buying". If the man is spending money to get her attention, how can he not feel like "she wouldn't be here if I didn't have money" and how can she not feel on some level like a commodity being purchased? Your real friends are the ones who enjoy your company without you spending money to garner their attention. It seems to me your real lovers will be much the same in that regard.

<comment><USER19> You know, some people consider quoting Styx songs a criminal offense.

Domo arigato.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems to have happened in the late 1930s or the early 1940s (he says "while I was working on the bomb".)

From what I've heard, the US was very conservative at that time; girls & women in general did not have sex before marriage. And additionally was contraception widely available at that time?

The sexual revolution happened in the 60s and 70s. So, this does not make any sense.

Can someone enlighten me?

<comment><USER21> That's just good old day syndrome. I've had some very interesting talks with older folks about this very subject. They all agree that the prevalence of sex _in the culture_ is certainly a bit more front and center today. However, men have always been men and women have always been women.

Teen birth rates where at their highest in 40's, 50's and 60's after all. Contraception certainly has played a role in reducing that, but it does demonstrate that conservative America has always been a myth propagated by a certain sect of older conservatives.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. My talks (at least with older people who went to college) have given me quite a different perspective - where people would typically marry very young (often out of college), and no one would even think of having sex without at least being engaged.

I don't doubt the truth of this story (though there is certainly hyperbole); rather I find it hard to believe that 'sleep with' in this context actually means 'sex'. The main flags are A) Feynman is discussing with other people about it (afaik not acceptable socially then) and B) a sexual one-night stand would be even less so.

Finally I wager that the teen birth rate drop is solely due to an increase in education and contraption (and even legalized abortions). Obviously, there were some teenagers having sex in the 1940s (with a much higher liklihood of becoming pregnant right now), but, due to the risks and less acceptance than now, the rate was lower.

<comment><USER23> Roger Ebert provides a relevant peek under history's skirt. [http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/making_out_is_its_ow...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/making_out_is_its_own_reward.html)

Keep in mind that these were students living under strict authority. The adults in Feynman's story and elsewhere were free to do as they pleased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This probably only works if you're Richard Feynman.

<comment><USER25> Not in the slightest. At the risk of destroying my chances of _ever_ getting into YC (hi JL, PG, RTM et al!) I had astonishingly great luck with asking attractive women if they wanted to make out with me last Spring. Seriously: "hey, let's make out!" or "would it unduly offend you if I asked you to make out with me?"

You're probably better off asking this sort of thing after conversing with them for a bit so you don't come off as a creep. As long as you've established your bona fides you won't, especially if you say it with a smile.

I think I got one rejection, and her response was more of a good natured, laughing 'that sounds fun, but i shouldn't' variety.

<comment><USER26> The shock & awe opener

[http://www.rsdwiki.com/index.php?title=SHOCK_and_AWE..._The_...](http://www.rsdwiki.com/index.php?title=SHOCK_and_AWE..._The_Apocalypse_Opener)

<comment><USER27> the value in trying this and having it work is that you instantly understand just how little any of the surface bullshit matters. confidence. end of story. there is nothing else.

<comment><USER22> Well, for the 14% of the population that works on, sure.

Confidence is key, but there is a difference between a confident stud and a confident creep.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure what a confident creep would be like. Confidence is confidence. A confident man knows restraint, and as long as he's good with restraint, he's not in danger of being a creep.

It is good to play with expectations, to acknowledge them without actually "acknowledging" them. A creep wouldn't have the confidence to let this play out; they have to confirm that the other person is aware of the "acknowledgment" being played out. It's like some guy saying "did you get it? Did you get the joke?" Except the creep is saying this with everything he does. His body language, tone, talking speed, and even with his language.

A "confident creep" is a contradiction.

<comment><USER22> This may just boil down to semantics, but I would call the hypothetical "confident man" you are talking about a confident, socially skilled man.

My "confident creep" has inner confidence in his abilities (he might even think of himself as a god among men), but he cannot correctly project his confidence (though in his mind, he is projecting it correctly). He can drop any empathy and ask such a question without being nervous, but his style, dress, conversation, etc. are so awkward, it fails.

Point being: Confidence is not the only thing that matters. You actually need social skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The section following, on mental arithmetic, is actually even more appropriate for HN.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like Feynman getting introduced to what is now called "PUA".

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it's important not to understate the fact that a young Feynman was just inherently really sexy. (Talking as a straight man.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I could never do it.

I just can't.

I'm too much of a coward. I think I might die if I asked.

<comment><USER33> That's the best part--you don't die. You might even live a little.

<comment><USER32> On an intellectual level I totally agree with you; you're right.

<comment><USER34> Then do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just out of curiosity: Is Feynman using 'sleep with' as a euphemism for sex? I'm guessing that, this story being written in the 1940s/50s, pre-sexual revolution, that it is more referring to sleeping with a some low level of intimacy.

<comment><USER35> Unless I am horribly behind the times, people in the US still use 'sleep with' as a euphemism for sex.

<comment><USER22> This post teaches us all a valuable lesson: always frame the question before, not after, asking it. People stop reading after the '?'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting and entertaining article.

I imagine if the master of ceremonies gave the a physicist the same advice today (say, Brian Cox for example) I picture the guy walking around with a pimp hat etc.

</comment><comment><USER37> Classy title. I can't understand why women don't feel comfortable in our industry....

<comment><USER38> Could you explain your comment?

Is there something sexist about getting laid, or using the phrase "getting laid"? Because I know lots of regular women who both use that term and enjoy getting laid.

This is a not a male/female thing; this is a conflict of attitudes about sex.

If someone gets bent out of shape because they hear people talking about getting laid they seriously need to grow up.

Or get laid.

<comment><USER37> _"This is a not a male/female thing; this is a conflict of attitudes about sex. If someone gets bent out of shape because they hear people talking about getting laid they seriously need to grow up. Or get laid."_

The phrase is equally trashy when used by either gender. It's possible to talk about sex without sounding like a teenage boy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Definitely giving this a go on Friday night.

</comment><comment><USER40> there has been a lot of focus on social dynamics and this type of stuff if it interests you, it's called pick up. for the longest time, mystery and neil strauss were the icons. i'm not sure who it is now, or if they have been replaced. i'd say the whole thing has died down since it got into mainstream television. all of those tricks don't work anymore because the girls know all about it.

if you're really looking for a bold opener, google "the apocalypse opener." this will make pitching investors a walk in the park.

<comment><USER41> Most girls still haven't heard about it or don't pick up on these things.

I actually spent last Saturday hanging out with a self-described pick up artist that mostly picks girls up during the day, in the street (he insists it's far easier than bars and clubs). The kind of stuff he pulled off right in front of me was mind blowing. At one point he literally had a girl he was talking to biting her lips and looking at him as if she was preparing to jump him then and there, and he got her to give him a neck massage right in the middle of a shop.

A lot of what he was using was routines. He'd tell a girl with a friend that she was so adorable and petite he could just pick her up and steal her away, for example.

Then he'd do it.

Without exception the girls absolutely loved it, and he'd joke with them about how her friend clearly wanted them to hook up since she didn't object when he "stole her away". In most cases their friend more or less turned into a cheerleader for him after that, and he got the girls number without fail in those cases.

Despite that, a lot of "pick up" has in any case transitioned into less stilted / scripted manipulative stuff and into "self help". E.g. companies like RSD that focus on being "natural" and improving yourself much more than routines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wanted to respond with a rant about how terribly degrading and insulting it is to women to classify them all as bitches, to presume a few dollars worth of drinks, in a just world, entitles one to intercourse.

And then I realized the women involved are the sort who would gladly manipulate a guy's emotions and waste his time for a few dollars in drinks.

And I realized that justice was probably being served without my intervention.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is exactly what the fictional John Forbes Nash, Jr did in "A Beautiful Mind". Does anybody here know whether he really did, or if they got it from somewhere else (Feynman, perhaps)?

</comment><comment><USER44> "I bought her $1.10 worth of sandwiches,"

how old is this story?

<comment><USER45> _"When I was first at Cornell I corresponded with a girl I had met in New Mexico while I was working on the bomb."_

Considering the first sentence in the story, I'd say 65 years.

<comment><USER46> which would put it at around $12 of sandwiches in today's money, according to miscellaneous online inflation calculators

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> That was before HIV. Still, the pick up artists seem to give similar advice.

<comment><USER48> It was also before mass production of penicillin. Venereal diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea were a much bigger deal back then.

<comment><USER22> Agreed.

For the record, it is very hard to contract HIV from vaginal sex. (< 1/10000 per-instance chance)

<comment><USER49> That's exaggerating quite a bit; but more importantly leaving off the other half of the equation — it's a lot easier for a woman to contract it from a man.

<comment><USER22> True, women are more likely to get it from a man than vice-versa, but my number (1 in 10k) is not exaggerating all that much.

<http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/insite?page=ask-05-10-11>

"Two large studies in California and Europe found a per-contact risk (meaning the risk of a man becoming infected from each instance of penile-vaginal sex) of 0.0001 (1 in 10,000) and 0.0003 (1 in 3,000)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Feynman had good karma enough to die twice of cancer

<comment><USER50> It isn't fair to not have the option to delete my comment</comment></comment>


Google secure search forwards to unencrypted local search in non US countries - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have always hated this really, really bad practice of web sites forwarding me to local versions depending on my location. It's the reason I don't usually use Google.

But I think now they really screwed up, as <https://www.google.com> (encrypted) forwards to <http://www.google.de> (unencrypted) for me.

Anyway, this extremely nasty habit should just die. If I want a German version, I am capable of typing .de instead of .com, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yep. I noticed this earlier too, see here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1368956>

So, the solution is to use <https://duckduckgo.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, so it seems it just doesn't work yet, not just because of the forward?

<comment><USER2> No, I think it does not work at all, unless you are in the US.

Maybe someone from there can check ?

<comment><USER3> Works for me in the US--- doesn't redirect anywhere, and when I enter a search term, the results page is served over https also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems fine here in the UK.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation of books on Angular in large enterprise? - <AUTHOR> We are moving to angular frontend from old java web applications. Can someone recommend good resources i.e books, videos, tutorials? Everything I see online is on very basic level. We are looking for how to architect the frontend in large enterprise. <comment><USER2> Angular.io</comment>


"Other" Televisions at the New York World's Fair (1995) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/radio_age_11-95.pdf <comment><USER2> They mean the 1939 World's Fair. CRTs were about 5" diameter then and very dim.

Scophony showed a 24" TV in 1938.[1] It was mechanically scanned, but, unlike the Baird system, a whole line was illuminated at once, not just one dot. Scophony could produce a reasonably bright image; they even had a projector. But it was complicated, expensive, and needed about 1KW of power for a receiver.

The Eidophor system from 1946 was the first theater-scale projection system. It used an electron beam to write on an oil film, which was then illuminated with an arc lamp to produce an image for projection.[2] All this had to be done in a vacuum, so it had vacuum pumps. For color, three of them were used. Amazingly, it was a commercial success; it was the only bright big screen TV technology until well into the 1980s. Apollo-era NASA had at least four of them in Mission Control. The huge, complex Eidophor machines showed up in stadiums, movie theaters, and rock concerts for decades. It's one of the clunkiest technologies ever deployed.

[1] [http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/the-last-remaining- sc...](http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/the-last-remaining-scophony-tv- receiver-high-speed-scanner-motor/) [2] [http://www.earlytelevision.org/eidophor.html](http://www.earlytelevision.org/eidophor.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> We forget that television had a "pre-history" of sorts, that TV had been the object of many tinkering since the early days of the 20th Century. In particular, Leon Theremin [1], known for the musical instrument invention that bears his name [2] is credited with demonstrating a TV in 1925 whose resolution was not surpassed until the GE demo at the World's Fair in 1939.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ah the horizontal hold, had me flash back to needing to adjust it to get a stable picture on UHF channel 20 when I was a kid.</comment>


Cloud Memorystore: A fully managed in-memory data store service for Redis - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/05/Introducing-Cloud-Memorystore-A-fully-managed-in-memory-data-store-service-for-Redis.html <comment><USER2> There's a fine print that says:

> ¹Basic Tier instances experience a downtime and a full cache flush during > scaling. Standard Tier instance experience very minimal downtime and loss of > some unreplicated data during scaling operation. ²Applicable for GA release > only.

Does that mean that right now there are no persistance options with this Managed Redis cluster? I have never tried to use Redis but I've been eyeing it for a while and the most confusing part is how it handles persistence.

Apparently there are ways to have Redis configured to be pretty durable as outlined here:

[https://redis.io/topics/persistence](https://redis.io/topics/persistence)

But it doesn't look like Google is supporting either RDB nor AOF with this managed service, they say RDB is coming though.

Doesn't it heavily limits the use cases for this product and relegate it to a cooler memcache?

This is not criticism, it's just curiosity on good use cases for this product.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like they're scaling by adding larger instances, replicating, and then failing over. So they'll lose any data that hasn't been synced to the new instance when the failover occurs. I'd bet it's rare, but they're being explicit about it.

The Basic Tier probably only uses one instance, so they just replace it in place.

<comment><USER4> What would be the point of downtime they mention other than doing the sync?

<comment><USER5> From the docs:

       Basic Tier: Provides a standalone Redis instance. Use this tier for applications that require a simple Redis cache.

If you were only reallocating replicas you'd expect no downtime. But turning on replication isn't seamless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The three big reasons I use Redis are:

1) Data structures like lists, hashmaps and sets

2) Persistence

3) Blindingly fast

I wanted to see if Google's implementation sacrifices any speed.

 _snip_

EDIT: I deleted the benchmark results from this post because they're meaningless. I used the "intrinsic latency" tool [0] that Redis provides, but it must be run _on the server_.

So my results only reflected the intrinsic latency of the client VM, not the new Cloud Memorystore.

My apologies.

[0] [https://redis.io/topics/latency](https://redis.io/topics/latency)

<comment><USER7> Your benchmarks:

Google's new Cloud Memorystore, 1.0 GB:

        redis-cli -h 10.0.0.3 --intrinsic-latency 100
        677411416 total runs in 100 seconds
        avg latency: 0.1476 microseconds / 147.62 nanoseconds per run

Open-source Redis on a Google Cloud Platform micro instance, 0.6 GB:

        redis-cli -h localhost --intrinsic-latency 100
        353427208 total runs in 100 seconds
        avg latency: 0.2829 microseconds / 282.94 nanoseconds per run

Open-source Redis on an AWS EC2 micro instance, 1.0 GB:

        redis-cli -h localhost --intrinsic-latency 100
        21681751 total runs in 100 seconds
        avg latency: 4.6122 microseconds / 4612.17 nanoseconds per run

My benchmark:

Open-source Redis on a Hetzner Cloud VPS, CX11 (92% cheaper than Google's Cloud Memorystore):

        redisbench-client:~# redis-cli -h 22.214.171.124 --intrinsic-latency 100
        Max latency so far: 1 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 77 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 113 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 130 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 2562 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 2835 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 4165 microseconds.
        Max latency so far: 5497 microseconds.

        757281326 total runs (avg latency: 0.1321 microseconds / 132.05 nanoseconds per run).
        Worst run took 41628x longer than the average latency.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately intrinsic latency does not measure the latency of the Redis instance, but the one of the whole host, that is, the kernel scheduler max latency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is it that GCP can provide an internal IP address for Cloud Memorystore but not for Google Cloud SQL? It would be beneficial for these teams to work together, no internal IP in cloud SQL makes it much less appealing then AWS RDS.

<comment><USER10> Private IP support for Cloud SQL is on the roadmap. The reality of development is that some things are easier to do on a new product. It's not a matter of communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > authorized networks ensure that the Redis instance is accessible only when > connected to the authorized VPC network

That's good that this is handled smoothly as it's the way Redis wants auth to work.

I've always seen the security story to be one of the big weaknesses of Redis. No TLS, opt-in password with no user and only one shared password, no per- database privileges, etc.

Does anyone know the status of TLS in Redis? I heard somewhere that Amazon has a patch to add that directly, rather than having to use stunnel.

<comment><USER12> It's being worked in in pull request: [https://github.com/antirez/redis/pull/4855](https://github.com/antirez/redis/pull/4855)

Also, antirez recently met with patch author: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16943289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16943289)

<comment><USER11> Cool! I saw that thread last week, but didn't check back in to see that antirez responded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is exciting, but I really hope that Terraform will add support for it in reasonable time. These days I'd prefer to not manually manage cloud resources if I don't have to.

<comment><USER14> Hashicorp doesn't seem to like Google Cloud too much. I've been moving to Google Cloud Builder and it's Jinja and Python templates, which I happen to be a little familiar with...

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure why you'd say that Hashicorp doesn't like Google Cloud. I can think of recent partnerships between Hashicorp and Google on Vault and Terraform that are both substantial integrations. Google Cloud and Hashicorp both have people that work on the GCP Terraform Provider, and they do an excellent job keeping it up to date. By all external measures this looks like a great relationship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the benefits of using this compare to self-hosted Redis on a Compute instance?

<comment><USER17> It's fully managed, so you don't need to worry about OS security patches, rotating logs and all the other administration that comes with running your own server. Basically the same benefits as using Cloud SQL/Aurora RDS vs maintaining your own MySQL server.

Disclaimer: I work at GCP, but not on Memorystore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it managed redis or something google made themselves that has the same API? I wonder if they will keep up with all the new stuff in redis like streams.

<comment><USER19> It's the open source version of Redis v3.2.11

<comment><USER18> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was pretty excited when Memorystore came out, as there is very little I enjoy less than managing redis servers. However, I've had nothing but trouble since switching. Applications than ran smoothly on redis instances deployed on kubernetes engine are giving me all sorts of problems now.

"NOREPLICAS Not enough good slaves to write" errors have been extremely common, sometimes followed by problems connecting. Then operations on the memorystore instance start pending (I mean "repairing"), taking 20+ minutes. During that time I obviously get connection refused errors. This usually comes with huge spikes in network in/out that are completely unexplained by the app pointing to the service.

I thought the pitch for MemoryStore was that it was a managed service; y'know, less time on devops and all of that. I've found the exact opposite to be the case. Pay more to Google, spend more time on devops, get a redis service that doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Biggest concern I have about all these hosted Redis replacements is that of latency.

I use Redis on a highly controlled internal network and also local for its speed... This goes when moving to a hosted solution.

<comment><USER22> If you're already accessing it from within GCP, their network is excellent, not much lower latency than a high-quality internal physical network (under an order of magnitude) and highly flexible and configurable. In that use case it should be comparable to any solution you can host within GCP except hosting on the same instance as each client and using loopback access.

For accessing from outside GCP, yeah the broader internet latency would figure into this as any other external solution.

<comment><USER21> It depends on what you mean by not much lower latency though...

At Redis speeds the network latency can quite often be the bottleneck.

<comment><USER22> Double digits of microseconds of difference as of some time last year, if I remember correctly - it might have gotten even better since then since I know Google wanted to narrow that gap.

(Disclaimer: While I have in the past worked for the GCP team, nothing in this comment relates to my time at Google or to info I learned then.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If Redis Cluster support is coming soon, how are they currently handing cross region replication and failover? Is Redis Sentinel (painful and requires client support) deprecated now?

<comment><USER24> > how are they currently handing cross region replication and failover?

We do not, unfortunately. Redis service is regional and only failover from one zone to another within a region is provided.

\--

I am an engineer on Memorystore Redis team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was hoping to see something of a more flexible pricing like per 100 MB provisioned based on the far fetched assumption that it is not just a managed redis(like?) offering but a fully abstracted managed redis service where you are just charged by GB/s used as with lots of other services.

This just boils down to the same cost as self hosting minus the self hosting hassle. So not too bad as its just easier to use + no vendor lock in since it is redis compatible at a similar price point.

</comment><comment><USER26> how does this compare with Redis Labs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Redis Labs (the official sponsor of Redis now) uses a custom proxy layer on top of Redis, giving you the latest 4.0 version with support for modules, no downtime and features like storing the values of keys on SSDs. They also support cross-region multi-master using CRDTs.

If you need VPC/internal access only, or are fine with the lower level of features, or just want to consolidate on GCP services, then Cloud Memorystore can work, but otherwise I'd recommend Redis Labs.

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately redis labs isn't available in all regions of GCloud. I was effectively begging them to add support in Europe a couple of months ago.

<comment><USER28> same here for India datacenter of AWS or GCloud

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> how can a instance with 1gb cost 35 USD per month... also I would've hoped that google won't add tiers, more like "limits" and that if I only host 1mb on my instance that I would only pay for 1mb... besides that I could scale to XGb (depending on my limit)...

<comment><USER30> I totally get the benefits of a managed service, but...$35/month for 1GB is just silly.

<comment><USER31> Are you sure you fully understand the benefit?

$35 is, what, 30 minutes of an engineer's time from a company's perspective? If the management of the service would take any more than that every month (and it easily could!), you're ahead.

<comment><USER30> Not everyone works in the Bay making boat-loads of cash. My comment was from the perspective of a small business in Europe.

<comment><USER31> Even then, I think it'd be unlikely that the time-cost wouldn't make it worthwhile. People generally underestimate how much time gets soaked up by managing a computer service.

<comment><USER32> $35 seems to be 3x more cost than AWS's smallest tier (no further comparison of features/value beyond price), so it does seem expensive for an introductory project, considering a single $35~ Digital Ocean VPS might all some companies need their first year. On the other hand, the number of times I've seen an engineer suggest spending $500-$2000 in labor/hours (when already behind on mission critical work) as alternative to spending $5/month in some SaaS is just staggering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can someone explain use cases of using remote redis? Doesn't network delay is a big downside?

<comment><USER34> In a datacenter, a network request to a server that has the information in DRAM can be faster than pulling it locally off of an SSD. It goes back and forth with perf gains on either side, but they're on the same order with different tradeoffs.

<comment><USER35> Especially if that "local SSD" is really a virtualized block device over a network anyway, which is how most people are deploying their cloud stuff for convenience.

<comment><USER36> Is this still the case? We don't use much cloud from the big boys but I thought even they were moving towards local storage. All of our OVH instances are local SSD backed.

<comment><USER35> Both are available and AWS and GCP are pretty up-front about what you should use depending on the use case. The virtualized devices do have advantages in terms of being able to be moved around and not tied to the life of a single instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great concept, I am having a serious look</comment>


Fans raise cash to help phone phreaker John Draper, aka Cap'n Crunch - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/09/fans-raise-cash-to-help-phone-phreaker-john-draper-aka-capn-crunch/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29&utm_content=Netvibes <comment><USER2> For those interested he's currently doing an AMA on reddit.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hpje1/im_the_person_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hpje1/im_the_person_who_showed_steve_jobs_the_blue_box/)

<comment><USER3> His answer to "Are you wealthy?" is sobering, as I would not naively have expected destitution for someone with his technical ability or status as an early Apple employee.

We're presently in the best market of the history of ever, but I think young engineers should be prudent about recognizing that we too will eventually be old some day. Make sure you've got a plan for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " Draper himself doesn't even know who started the fundraiser, but the money is intended to help with his medical bills"

If he doesn't know who started it, how do we know the money will actually get to him?

</comment><comment><USER5> So glad we got that healthcare problem all buttoned up in America over the past six years.

Would anyone have to have a fundraiser in any other "1st world" country for medical problems?

But hey let's go spend billions on more wars, bomb the billions in equipment we bought for Iraq and then buy more equipment to replace it for Iraq.

ps. it is funny how people forget Steve Jobs started out committing felonies without ever getting prosecuted

pps. apparently what he really needs is a fundraiser to publish a book he has been working on, including a chapter on Woz

<comment><USER6> > So glad we got that healthcare problem all buttoned up in America over the > past six years.

"Politics is the art of the possible." — Otto von Bismarck (attributed)

When one side is opposing a plan it originated, how can anyone make progress?

> But hey let's go spend billions on more wars, bomb the billions in equipment > we bought for Iraq and then buy more equipment to replace it for Iraq.

This is only relevant if you have to placate deficit hawks who don't put a priority on medical spending.

<comment><USER7> Fun coincidence: Bismarck implemented the first welfare state in the history of the world, with sickness, accident and disability insurance and old age pension.

To quote:

         The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently. The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country.

<comment><USER7> Sorry for the formatting, here is the quote without that scroll bar:

The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently. The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope he is considering Fecal Transplant for his C.Diff infection.

</comment><comment><USER9> He joined my Cards Against Humanity game in Burger King a couple years ago at Defcon. Definitely an interesting guy... He had lots of stories and was pretty open about everything.

</comment><comment><USER10> The qikfunder project was previously in the top five on then HN front page but even though it was well voted, got buried after an hour or so.

Not sure why, but glad the Ars page is now on.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe someone can clarify, the Ars article doesn't mention this, but wasn't there another effort to fundraise for him and help him out? I thought there was a similar attempt a few months ago, but I can't seem to find any info on it.

Maybe I'm mistaken, either way, it is good to see people coming to his aid.

<comment><USER12> Yes, there was. I searched HN and found [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1993898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1993898) from 4 years ago, titled "John Draper Donation Drive Verified". More details at [http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blackhat- lounge/26...](http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blackhat- lounge/261835-save-captain-crunch-john-draper.html) . It's also mentioned fleetingly in [http://www.webcrunchers.com/friends-of- crunch/](http://www.webcrunchers.com/friends-of-crunch/) .</comment></comment>


New York City cops will replace their 36,000 Windows phones with iPhones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/28/16215424/nypd-windows-phone-8-1-iphone-8-new-york <comment><AUTHOR> Is that a $36m spend of public money?</comment>


Android Issue 9392: SMS are intermittently sent to random wrong contact - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392

<comment><USER2> Facebook group, from the bug report

<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123692817683864></comment>


Why Git is Better Than X - <AUTHOR> http://whygitisbetterthanx.com

<comment><USER2> I prefer Mercurial (Hg). I'm sure Git is the preferred choice amongst the alpha of alpha geeks, but for small and medium-sized projects, Hg's simple intuitive command structure, and more than adequate speed (2nd only to Git) is a God send.

Git just seems overly complex for all but the most sophisticated workflows. I could be wrong, but that has been my experience.

<comment><USER3> This was my exact argument for Bazaar. After playing with Git 1.6 for a few minutes today all my usual commands work.

It took me literally 3.5 minutes to get Git setup using the OSX install package and fixing my .profile to include the new path. I'm very impressed.

Now if only Github had a trial membership with a Private repo...

<comment><USER4> I'm in agreement with Github having a free/trial private repo. It's a huge oversight.

<comment><USER5> GitHub is totally free and unrestricted for public code. This should give you plenty of freedom to try out the service without paying. Also, as a promotion for Cyber Monday, new signups today (12/1) can get a paid plan free for one month.

<comment><USER6> Because of this, I just signed up to try it. I'm going to be honest though: I wouldn't have without a private repository. I like to version control my homework, and obviously it's against school policy to publicly post solutions to homework. If this works out I'll end up paying for a micro plan, but I never would have even given GitHub an opportunity without a private repo.

Of course, that's just my opinion. :-) You may not even be targeting students anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole site would be more convincing if you included a section on reasons why git is worse than X as well. I don't know git well enough to know these, except for one: handling large binary files that change frequently.

It would make it seem more honest if you admitted that git wasn't the alpha and the omega when it comes to version control. I think it would also show people that you've carefully thought about this and are not just a 'fanboy'.

<comment><USER8> > I don't know git well enough to know these, except for one: handling large > binary files that change frequently.

For the curious among us: what systems handle this better than git?

<comment><USER7> Subversion is not terrible at this. It stores binary diffs.

<comment><USER9> Maybe they've improved this in recent versions, but I remember this being excruciatingly slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why I don't care:

Because it simply doesn't matter that much IMHO. A startup doesn't succeed or fail based on _which_ RCS it uses, it may fail if it doesn't use any at all, and it may fail if people are wasting a large amount of time doing silly things (Moving directories in cvs).

If you're hacking open source projects however, then I'd say Git is most likely the way to go.

<comment><USER11> I version control system determines the workflow so it has direct impact of the internals of a company.

<comment><USER10> For a small startup team, say 5 person max, is the workflow using git much different than using svn say?

<comment><USER11> We used it in a style where 2-3 people teams shared code to develop a feature, a person often worked on different teams at the same time. When a group finished they forwarded they changes to the 'merge master', a weekly shift of lead developers of the company. After a code review the code reached our main repository or landed back for a review. Sometimes weeks of development arrived to the main tree in a safe way with full revision history. This kind of development method was unheard before, the style change improved code quality and reduced conflicts.

My favorite story when we worked with a college thousands of kilometers away till the last minute to demonstrate a key feature to a customer at a trade show, exchanging revisions by emails, delivered on a USB stick. That's a real technology start-up way to handle development. I wrote and debug a lot of code to that company but my biggest impact was to introduce mercurial to the team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've used svn and git a little and am shopping around for something to use on a current project. I found git harder to use than svn, given that I'm not a power user. I noted that the last item on the page seems to reflect that--git is only easier to learn than perforce, according to the site.

Is that really true? I might just be dumb, but I had a harder time with git. Given that I'm in mostly single-user mode, it seems like I might be more productive with svn simply because I wouldn't have to wrestle with it as much to get going.

Can anyone recommend a "git for people who can understand and operate svn without hurting themselves?" guide? Or is the value of git significantly lessened in single-user mode?

<comment><USER13> If you really just want a minimal source control system, Git does the trick well enough. I don't think you need anything more than 'git init' (make a fresh project), 'git commit -a' (commit all new changes except for deleted or renamed files), 'git add' (to add new files), 'git rm' (to remove files), 'git checkout' (for reverting changes), 'git log' (obvious), and 'git diff' (also hopefully obvious). Put a .gitignore file in the root of your project listing globbed filenames for everything you don't want to manage. Run 'git commit' after every sequence of 'git add' or 'git rm' invocations. That's it. You shouldn't need any more documentation than this paragraph.

Branching is a killer feature, as is clean history management, as is the index, and when you find yourself wishing more control over what happens to your source code, wishing for freedom to experiment, all these tools will be there waiting for you.

<comment><USER14> 'git mv' for moving files, and I'm overly dependent upon 'git status' for checking what's changed.

<comment><USER15> mv is just sugar, though, you can easily copy the file using unix "cp" and delete/add to get the same result. Git does not track renames.

<comment><USER16> Or, just use the Unix mv, and let Git figure out what you did at the next "git add .".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another weekly post about why git's better that anything else. It's just the fourth in four weeks.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish I could use Git on one of my current projects. But I need to work with non-programmers (on OSX in my case) and any command line stuff (or anything more complicated than checkout/add/update/commit) is totally out of the question.

Still, I'm sure it won't be long...

<comment><USER19> I also work in an environment with people who should not be going near their command line. Well, its not that they shouldn't but they don't want to be forced to learn commands.

I'm working on a Git GUI that should be fairly beautiful (I'm a former graphic designer), but there aren't really any good GUIs out there right now.

If you do decide to use some sort of VCS, svn has some great GUIs.

like Versions (<http://www.versionsapp.com/>), Cornerstone (<http://www.zennaware.com/cornerstone/>) or ZigVersion (<http://zigversion.com/>).

Versions is nice because it can easily integrate with their hosted subversion stuff called Beanstalk.

<comment><USER20> For Mercurial, there is TortoiseHg:

<http://tortoisehg.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER21> Which works very well on Windows, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cl-user I am more of a bzr and svn user. Both work quite nicely for me. I haven't really used git on a project.

I know git performance is much much better than bzr but as thats not a major concern for small/medium projects, could someone who has used both bzr and git give some pointers on what one would be nicer to use than the other in areas other than performance?

<comment><USER16> From what I've seen of bzr and git, if you're competent with one, learning the other won't change your life the way a switch from cvs to bzr might. The way git figures out what you've done to a directory tree using sha1 hashes is interesting; incidentally it won't automatically add an empty directory. In bzr, you tell the VCS what you're doing so it can track operations better; git generally doesn't care about anything but the contents of the files in your tree. The staging area and in-place branching in git are pretty cool, but not essential, and I suspect they'll be picked up by bzr and hg in due course.

Mark Shuttleworth wrote a series in his blog about what he cares about in version control, and why he picked bzr for Ubuntu and Launchpad, which is an interesting counterpoint to the git lovefest we've been seeing here.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> by the way, as a nice demonstration of some of this git/github greatness, there have been a number of useful changes submitted by users that have been pulled in and deployed now, including the beginnings of a french translation of the site that I've put up at <http://fr.whygitisbetterthanx.com>

you can see the network activity here : <http://github.com/schacon/whygitisbetter/network> \- all of which has happened since I posted this news item 2 hours ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a funny coincidence this turns up when I spent about 30 minutes trying and failing to get Git working with Github earlier. I'm not sure if it was the flaky Windows port or not, but it just wasn't happening.

</comment><comment><USER20> Git seem nice, but as far as I know Github only use ssh. It suck when you are at work or school.

<comment><USER23> How is supporting only SSH bad? SSH is (or really should be) allowed through all firewalls. git:// support would be much harder to get accepted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Inaccurate. For example, in the section for "Any Workflow," the author contends that git is better than bzr, hg, svn, and perforce. However, this is completely false. bzr has far better support for the central repository (svn- style workflow) with its linking of repositories and hg and bzr both have excellent support for the models that Git supports. Funny that the site tries to defend against fanboyism while it itself is a poster boy for it.

<comment><USER25> The "Any Workflow" section is a little confusing. The fine print says "[Other SCMs] can do the simple flows I've described above, but they cannot do them with multiple simultaneous local branches." I don't understand this well enough to be convinced, and it's hardly good form to use examples that don't demonstrate your point.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point, so I have removed the dscm tags from that one. I added this because I feel that the ability to keep full branches in the same repository that you can push and delete easily gives you far greater flexibility than bzr or hg, which you can only get the exact same functionality by having separate repositories that are clones of each other. However, since that's not what I was demonstrating in that section and it's a bit too complicated to amend easily, I've removed it and focused in that section on the advantages over svn and perforce. perhaps later...

<comment><USER24> I should point out that hg is perfectly capable of maintaining multiple named branches in the same physical repository. Checkout hg branch. I am not that familiar with bzr but it probably has something similar.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Coming Obsolescence of Animal Meat - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/just-finless-foods-lab-grown-meat/587227/ <comment><USER2> Just today I was listening to the Freakonomics episode on this topic and it was interesting (as they usually are): [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/meat/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/meat/)</comment>


"Design for Hackers" Comes to DC! - Wednesday, Sept. 28th - <AUTHOR> http://design-for-hackers.eventbrite.com/

<comment><USER2> Just got my ticket and coincidently, my copy of the book is supposed to arrive today too. (BTW, this is one book you don't want on your device. I recommend dead tree version.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks to everyone in the community for hustling to get me to DC!

</comment><comment><USER4> Upvoted, however I cannot go. Enjoy it guys!</comment>


Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/04/the-jig-is-up-time-to-get-past-facebook-and-invent-a-new-future/256046/

<comment><USER2> an astute article. One thing not addressed here is the failure of the Smantic Web paradigm to really take off; I don't know whether this is because of a lack of critical mass in the quantity of semantically coded data or the immaturity of ontology frameworks or something else - my best guess being that the browser is no more suitable to traversal of the semantic web than FTP/ Archie/ Veronica/ Gopher were suitable browsing tools for hyperterxt - although each solved 'part of the puzzle.'</comment>


What Second Life got right, and no one else has since - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=625&doc_id=267244 <comment><USER2> Another thing Second Life got very right was the use of spatialized voice chat. That means you're not just able to look out of your avatars eyes and see who's in the room and who is currently talking (WebEx or Skype can do those), but you hear with your avatars ears too - so you can tell which direction the voice is coming from, which is very powerful when mixed with an avatar. You can tell speakers apart better and you can even turn your virtual head when you hear someone speaking from one direction and focus on them. It's a much more natural way of communicating than just mixing all the audio inputs together, and allowed me to associate voices with people (and their avatars) much better. Plus, if you can be bothered to learn the editor, you have some pretty powerful collaborative 3D modeling tools right there with you, which are handy for quick illustrations.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem that Second Life is solving, that is "how to have a shared experience with someone when you're not physically close", is actually the same problem that a lot of MMOs are solving in some form or another; see this article [1] for a great example.

The subtlety lies in the fact that MMOs are games, and that Second Life tried to tackle the problem by being more of a "lifestyle" application; sure you could play games, but you could also read content, talk with people merely for the sake of talking, and so on. The point was that content in Second Life would be mostly created by 3rd parties.

In other words, while MMOs offer a shared experience by being the content consumed by the users, Second Life positioned itself more as a platform for content that would be consumed by users all over the world. Second Life is the city, 3rd parties are the shops and businesses and movie theaters and so on.

It's a noble cause, and we are far from having solved that problem yet (as any couple in a long distance relationship will tell you). However, I don't believe we will solve that problem with software, but rather with interaction embodied in physical objects (which is an extremely recent field). For example, see [2] for a great example of what that could be (there is another, older project I have in mind that involves beds, lights and webcams but can't find any links right now).

If you're interested in tangible and embodied interaction, the academic TEI conference is the best place for that- sadly it's an ACM conference, which means you need an ACM account to access the paper archives, but you can easily access the proceedings index (for example for TEI2013 [4]) and google the PDFs from there :)

[1]: [http://www.latimes.com/local/la-fi-c1-rodrigos- world-2013090...](http://www.latimes.com/local/la-fi-c1-rodrigos- world-20130902-dto,0,2239765.htmlstory)

[2]: [http://littleriot.com/pillowtalk/](http://littleriot.com/pillowtalk/)

[3]: [http://www.tei-conf.org/](http://www.tei-conf.org/)

[4]: [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2460625&CFID=242863494&CFT...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2460625&CFID=242863494&CFTOKEN=97694859)

<comment><USER4> You're right about MMOs. But what's missing there is the opportunity to do anything or many things. In an MMO, you can only do one thing -- play the game. And that's fine, and millions of people are happy doing just that. But it's not a general-purpose tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Back in the early oughts I spent maybe 30 hours over a couple months exploring 2L. Ultimately I got bored and stopped returning because there was nothing to _do_ there: it was a non-game game, an un-gamified life that was a paper-thin emulation of "1L".

Things they got right: a way of building and dressing your avatar that was simple, comprehensible, yet extensive. In one afternoon I made an avatar that was a reasonable facsimile of actual me, round-faced gray-bearded professorial type, I even found a leather-elbowed sweater to wear. In another afternoon I made a muscular mustachioed dwarf.

Also well-done: their system for crafting persistent 3D objects. For professor me I made rose-colored glasses, transparent pink lenses (alpha channel) in a delicate gold frame, and easily had the avatar "wear" them. For the dwarf I purchased a gaudy axe but made an elaborate gold armband.

Once you'd done all that, you could buy property and build quite interesting buildings on it, but that needed a degree of OCD-like persistence I didn't care to invest because the reward for all this was zip. Building a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks would be somewhat more rewarding as you'd have the tower for your mantel afterward.

<comment><USER6> I would posit that you don't "go to" Second Life and look for something to do, any more than you "go to" a city with no plans and no friends and look for something to do there. Second Life is a place to meet up with people, and do things with those people that you would just as well do in reality, but can't (presumably because they're spread out all over the globe.) It's a place, not an activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I knew Second Life very well. In 2007, I built a perfect replica of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi [1], met with Philip Rosedale in San Francisco, and almost cried when he told me: "This is the most beautiful building I've ever seen in Second Life.".

I was very critical of Second Life at the time: I thought that most people were using it in the wrong way, and that the "gold rush" would soon bring problems.

However, I've been lucky: I found my job through Second Life. You can read the story here. [2]

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE282TzLH3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE282TzLH3M)

[2]: [http://www.brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by- amazon...](http://www.brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/)

</comment><comment><USER8> They created the perfect environment for furries to play out their fantasies, that's pretty much all that's there. Furries and flying dicks.

<comment><USER9> And really, isn't that the reason we _have_ the Internet?

I see no problems with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> MMORPGs also got that right. World of Warcraft still has 7.7M subscribers, for example, a solid order of magnitude more than Second Life.

<comment><USER11> Comparing World of Warcraft to Second Life is like comparing Monopoly (the board game) to Lego blocks. The former has definite, artificial rules and objectives, the latter is an open-ended kit. To put it another way, the former is like living in someone else's imagination, the latter encourages you to use your own imagination. Or:

WoW = paint by numbers

SL = paints and a blank canvas

It seems clear why WoW has more users: most people believe they have no creative ability (sadly).

<comment><USER12> Or people understand how fleeting digital creations in someone else's sandbox are. Or people just create in the real world and are looking for something else.

As a software developer I wouldn't play SL because I create all day. I don't want to play a game that requires the creativity I am out of for the day. Sometimes it's fine to paint by numbers.

<comment><USER11> Your first point is right on. In the early days, Linden Lab's executives always said that SL would eventually be 100% open source, client and server, like the Web (and Linden Lab would just be one of the hosting providers). But they never open-sourced the server code, so people who thought SL would become "something like the Web" (i.e. not controlled by any one company) became disillusioned. I'd definitely put myself in that camp.

Your second point explains you, but not why the population at large (most of which is _not_ doing anything creative at work) prefers to paint by numbers when not at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> See also: Cloud Party, which is basically SL in the browser, thus solving many of the problems SL has at the moment. Cloud Party plus WebRTC is gonna be real, real interesting.

[http://www.cloudparty.com](http://www.cloudparty.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> As someone who grew up reading cyberpunk scifi and saw how excited people got about things like VRML I am amazed that there aren't more environments like Second Life.

I think however that people have been using things like World of Warcraft in a similar way though.

I never understood how little interest or actually how much hostility there was towards SL by people younger than me.

I would like to build something a little bit like SL (but with less virtual sex obviously) using webgl and webrtc scripted in JS.

<comment><USER15> why "obviously" less virtual sex? it's a perfectly legitimate way of using an online social space.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps because it is distracting and overwhelms other useful uses of a social space? A characteristic it shares with other compelling areas of deep human interest such as politics and religion.

<comment> vertex-four To expand on this: in IRC, most social channels get overrun with two things really quickly if there aren't rules against them: sex (including public roleplay), and talk of increasingly addictive illegal drugs. Unfortunately, that means that people who are interested in discussing things other than sex and drugs are made to feel uncomfortable, and end up leaving.

IRC's solution is that each IRC network is pretty much a world full of communities, so it's not hard to find a sex/drug-related community to talk in, and one can participate in both communities at the same time.

The problem with translating that to "virtual world" type spaces is that generally, since one has an a single avatar that can only be in one place in the world at once, one can't interact with multiple communities at once.

Thus, some significant amount of people spend significant amounts of time in the sex and drug communities, and the other communities end up being overshadowed, and eventually leave the world. Niche communities can never develop in the first place, as they'll never reach the critical mass of people in the same place at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm kind of surprised no MMO/3d immersive world has been successful on consoles or (more importantly) mobile, yet. It seems like a pretty natural thing.

I guess VR of some kind of (Oculus, or Meta, or Glass, or something better than any of these) will be the ultimate platform for this. You could pretty much implement the peak of 1980/1990s standalone-VR-using-$5mm-rigs with $1-2k in equipment now, _and_ make it networked.

<comment><USER18> FFXI was developed for the PS3, where it was very popular. I believe the next one (FFIV?) will also run on consoles.

<comment><USER17> PS2, not PS3, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was kinda repelled by second life when it hit the news as basically a gold rush. People getting rich buying and selling virtual property seemed weird to me.

A company I used to work for had a building in SL in about 05. We were encouraged to use it for meetings for about a week then never heard of it again...

</comment><comment><USER20> They didn't get the demographic right -- MMO games have done that. There's WOW, there's even Minecraft as a more successful example. Niches to be sure, but that's how this sort of thing works -- you find your niche and push it to them.

</comment><comment><USER21> I played with that platform a bit for its possible use in education. I was blown away by what it provided so many years back. SL I think is one of the best digital life environment still out there. What I would have hoped for is that there was a DL (Digital Life) along with SL (Second Life) where users would use their real names and real like avatars. Would have been lot more fun for teachers to be meeting their students and people meeting their friends in this environment knowing who they are. I think SL limited themselves by this little restriction.

<comment><USER22> I took a class a few years ago where we were required to play Second Life. At one point we had an entire class meeting in the Second Life world instead of the classroom. It was interesting. It was really just a regular lecture though, but instead of looking at my professor in real life I was looking at an avatar of him. There wasn't really any benefit provided by SL in this case but I could imagine some more stimulating situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised no one has mentioned Surrogates [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/). Forget mobiles phones, Secondlife needs some sort of conciousness hookup.

</comment><comment><USER24> I will probably get downvoted for this, because no one is old enough to remember it...but Club Caribe for Q-link was a great example of this.

<comment><USER25> I remember that it was definitely not "MMO", just "MO". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_\(video_game\))

<comment><USER24> You would think that with all the retro cache a SCUMM-based MMOW would have, that someone would try to stand that up again...i bet a lot of people don't even know it existed. I wonder what standing a Club Caribe server up would involve?...

<comment><USER25> I remember reading that it ran on some kind of bigiron mainframe hardware of the time, so an old Samsung Galaxy phone could most likely handle it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I seriously doubt SL would have been (more) successful by having a client in the mobile space. If that is what the author really thinks then there is no takeaway from this article.

<comment><USER27> Nonetheless, I think he's right in his assumption that it brought a sense of togetherness that social networks desperately fail to reproduce.

However, i think gamers still experience it on more "regular" MMORPGs. I know I used to.

<comment> __--__ I think a large part of why social networks have desperately failed to reproduce the sense of togetherness has something to do with the state of the internet at large.

I used to play AstroMUD in the 90's and grew close enough to the community that when I stopped playing in college and started 5 years later, there were people who still remembered me. For some reason, that sense of community never transferred to the graphical mmorpgs (for me, anyway). Instead, the gaming community grew more and more toxic and I've since cut all ties with that part of the internet. Something similar happened with the progression from IRC to public chatrooms and livejournal to facebook.

The only real pattern I've been able to see in all this is one of inclusiveness. MUD, IRC and (the early years of) livejournal were hard to use for normal people. It artificially restricted the user base. The restricted access increased the value of the interactions therein. The threat of a ban also carried more weight, since getting another IP wasn't as easy in those days as it is today.

The theory is still kind of half baked and I'm not sure if I can focus it into a service that will reward people for maintaining a smaller, more intimate online network instead of the sprawling thing we have today.

 _shrug_ just thinking out loud...

<comment><USER28> I think the pre-social network Internet had a more homogeneou userbase: more text driven, more verbose, more learned, more, shall we say, "hackery". Or whatever. But there was a distinct property to that userbase that you don't get in the mainstream.

I think a lot of it has to do with the bar for entry: "RTFM" requires both reading and a manual. Anyway, half baked theory.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Return of Workflows (April) - <AUTHOR> http://devops.com/2015/04/09/return-workflows <comment><AUTHOR> A very good article, touching on many of the problems arising in workflows, also in the scientific field.

Interesting with the highlight of differences between "forward" and "backward" defined workflows (let data/tasks flow forward on success vs require some of the most downstream tasks or targets, and let the engine figure out upstream targets), as these have profound implications for how easy some workflow constructs are implemented. E.g. handling processes producing dynamic number of outputs is much easier in the forward defined one.

</comment><comment><USER2> The Common Workflow Language [https://common-workflow- language.github.io/](https://common-workflow-language.github.io/) is an open source effort to create a common way of defining portable, reproducible computational workflows to address the needs of the science community, but could have broad application to business task automation as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Domain names that start with a number, good, or bad idea? - <AUTHOR>

Specifically something like 29fish.com (which I just made up). Is this confusing (twentyninefish.com ??), bad for SEO? Is it ill advised? Would it be better to own juicefish.com? <comment><USER2> I think it is fine, but if you can't get both (29fish and twentyninefish) you might want to consider the latter.

It is more likely though that a person would type 29 over twentynine just over the shear size of the word, same goes for things like 103 and such, but thirty could easily be typed.

Sorry if that came off rambly but the size of the number typed will matter and you most definitily don't want something like 2fish.com if you can't get twofish.com but 103fish.com if you can't get it spelled out would be fine it is going to depend on the size of number word typed.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worked out alright for 37signals.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but I wonder if that is somewhat due to their audience, which is tech savvy. If the audience was the GQ Public, but of say slightly above average to high intelligence, would they be as comfortable thinking that way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stuff I have read indicates that, ideally, you should be able to convey it verbally without a lot of explaining. If it isn't clear whether it is "4" or "for" or "fore" in the domain name, you have a problem. I ran into that issue (of not being able to readily convey it verbally) with my first domain name so firsthand experience backs that up (though the issue wasn't a number).</comment>


What does the Internet think? - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net/ <comment><USER2> "The Internet is positive about Adolf Hitler": <http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net/?s=adolf%20hitler>

<comment><USER3> Not as much as for killing babies! <http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net/?s=killing%20babies>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Conclusion

The internet is negative about sentiment analysis.</comment>


Tell HN: We just added Web Apps to our app discovery service - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appstorehq.com/post/367758335/html5-or-native-apps-either-way-weve-got-you

<comment><USER2> Awesome. If you need to look somewhere first, we have uploaded a small app to the Apple Web Apps directory. We look forward to seeing some things come out of appstorehq for this implementation. Sweet

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We're hoping to come up with a nice little service around HTML5 (truth be told, I'm a big believer in web apps), and we have some fun tricks up our sleeve, too.

Feel free to contact me directly (email@example.com) if you ever have any ideas/comments/suggestions/etc. Or just to meet, too! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [HTML5 apps] link goes to [http://www.appstorehq.com/googlevoiceformobile- html5web-1341...](http://www.appstorehq.com/googlevoiceformobile- html5web-134100/app/G)

Which is broken :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, sorry about that. Fixed. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've gotten 19 visits from AppStoreHQ to my website since October. How can I increase my visibility?</comment>


Building the USS Enterprise over the next 20 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/100-year-roadmap

<comment><USER2> Some random guy designs a cool looking ship. Then he gets his buddy to modify science (or create new science) to make it seem feasible. Then, Random Guy creates stories based on this entire thing...

Why would anyone think basing reality on this fictional ship is a good idea?

There's an awful lot of science that needs to be discovered before we can do much of this. And the problem is that, in a capitalist-driven world (especially one that must have its profits tomorrow), it's not profitable at all to do this. Now, I'm a pure research proponent, but picking a goal 150 years in the future for a technology we don't even know could exist (say warp drive) is just a dumb way to try to Do Science.

Let's keep spending money on alternative fuel research, nuclear research, medical research ... and at some point, one of my great-grandchildren (or yours) will see the ground we've covered and have that epiphanic moment where she discovers proper wormhole travel. Or whatever.

<comment><USER3> Fiction plays a fundamental role in shaping the direction of our efforts.

For instance, Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" planted the seed for the Apollo Program. As Asimov's work on the laws of robotics planted a seed to inspire future AI development.

Edit: To better make my point, "Robert Manning used to make cardboard rockets... Now he makes real ones."[1]

[1] [http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/caines_arcade_vis...](http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/caines_arcade_visits_nasa_scientist_cardboard_rockets.php)

<comment><USER2> Agreed. But notice that "shaping the direction" is not the same as "let's build Star Trek."

Fiction inspires us to consider new possibilities, it doesn't give us a roadmap and blueprints. This desire to build Enterprise is assuming that Star Trek is indeed a roadmap and blueprints. Did we build the Apollo vehicles based on descriptions of technologies, materials or even shapes by Verne? No.

<comment><USER4> > This desire to build Enterprise is assuming that Star Trek is indeed a > roadmap and blueprints.

If you actually look at his roadmap and blueprints, Gen1 through Gen3 have nothing to do with the fictional Enterprise. It's just a catchy name. Only the Gen4 spec gets into "fictional science" territory (warp drives).

<comment><USER3> True, it seems like the Star Trek theme is just being used for the "hearts and minds" effect. Which might not be too bad an idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28821.0>

The topic ended by:

"Sci fi fans taking on NASA engineers is too funny, but also a waste of time. We deal with real hardware here.

Locked."

<comment><AUTHOR> That was an interesting discussion. It's a pity the forum rules are strict there. I'm no spaceflight/physics pro but he did have reasonable arguments.

<comment><USER6> There was no reasonable arguments made. Simply put, _if_ we wanted to build a space craft of the size or capacity of the enterprise, designing it from the outside in would be a terrible way to do it. The enterprise is a fictional concept produced over a very small amount of time by an artist. That alone means that it is simply unsuitable for the task.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rather than think of it as somebody trying to bring a sci-fi object to life, why not think of it as someone wanting to make space-flight a reality and realising that a sci-fi object would be a good start?

I posted this article to HN mostly because I wanted to see technical arguments as to why this would not work. This guy's thinking on a scale that is MUCH bigger than the current space technologists. Space flight is difficult and full of challenges but since we have to solve significant problems anyway, why not solve the ones that apply to spacecraft of this scale? (because this sort of ship inherently solves some big issues with humans in space like very little space in the ship, damage to human bodies from low gravity etc)

<comment><USER4> > I posted this article to HN mostly because I wanted to see technical > arguments as to why this would not work.

As I posted above, for Gen1 and Gen3, and possibly even Gen3, I don't think there are any.

The most important good thing these specs do is add in acceleration, even if it's small (0.002g is pretty small). Robert Heinlein said decades ago that the way we do space flight now, with ships "coasting" except for brief rocket burns to change course, is the equivalent of floating down the Mississippi on a raft. What we need are the equivalent of sailing ships--ships that always have some "push", even if it's small. The difference in travel times for any significant distance is amazing (note that current plans by NASA for a trip to Mars have it taking two _years_ one way!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I think this is very cool and would like it to happen, I don't think this is a good thing to be focusing on just yet. It seems like trying to build the HMS Victory before you've quite figured out how to build coastal clippers.

A better short term goal might be to get space stations up at Earth-moons L4/L5 that we can use as shipyards, resupply and refuelling stations. I think only once we start building spacecraft _in space_ will transport around the solar system become more commonplace.

Some relevant links:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point_colonization>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Networ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network)

<comment><USER3> That sounds more rational. But "lets build a station at L4" doesn't have the same appeal as "lets build freaking Enterprise", now does it? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You are looking for the "100 Years Space Ship", financed by DARPA (the same that made the Internet) and others.

<http://100yss.org/>

From the Mission Statement: "100 Year Starship will pursue national and global initiatives, and galvanize public and private leadership and grassroots support, to assure that human travel beyond our solar system and to another star can be a reality within the next century."

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome idea. The site desperately needs some HN help though. No call to action, not even a form to be notified through a mailing list; Twitter link is hidden.

</comment><comment><USER9> Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER10> It just misses the core factor mentioned in the fiction. The Nietzschesque need for a 3rd war were we would come out as a unified earth. Under one government.

Also the immediate need to focus on that after contact with the vulcans.</comment>


NCSC Director William Evanina: Election Threat Update for the American Public - <AUTHOR> https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2139-statement-by-ncsc-director-william-evanina-election-threat-update-for-the-american-public <comment><AUTHOR> Just the intro had me drawn in. Anyone know when #Volume5 drops? I'm hearing maybe as soon as Tuesday. Interesting times, to be sure.

> On July 24, 2020, I issued a statement to the American public providing an > unclassified overview of foreign threats to the 2020 election and offering > basic steps to mitigate some of these threats. At that time, I pledged that > the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) would continue to update the American > public and other key stakeholders on the evolving election threat landscape, > while also safeguarding our intelligence sources and methods.

> Today, we are making good on that promise by sharing additional information > with the public on the intentions and activities of our adversaries with > respect to the 2020 election. This information is being released for the > purpose of better informing Americans so they can play a critical role in > safeguarding our election. Below is the latest public update:</comment>